© ATOM 2015
A STUDY GUIDE BY MARGUERITE O’HARA
http://www.metromagazine.com.au
ISBN: 978-1-74295-586-5
http://www.theeducationshop.com.au
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William Thornhill is driven by an oppressed, impoverished
past and a desperate need to provide a safe home for his
beloved family in a strange, foreboding land. The Secret
River is an epic tragedy in which a good man is compelled
by desperation, fear, ambition and love for his family to participate in a crime against humanity. It allows an audience,
two hundred years later, to have a personal insight into the
troubled heart of this nation’s foundation story.
There are two eighty minute episodes that tell the story of
one of the ultimately tragic wars between colonists and the
country’s original inhabitants. The ongoing effects resulting from these early conflicts over land still resonate today,
more than 200 years on from this story. Who owns the land
and who has the right to use it, develop it and protect it?
A brief preview of the series can be viewed at: http://abc.
net.au/tv/programs/secret-river/
Advice to teachers
See, they reckon all this belongs to
them. And every man jack of ‘em
shares it. Give and take. It’s just their
way. Then we come along, and we just
take it ... if we’re not gonna give, then
they’re going to take it back
- Thomas Blackwood
»»1. INTRODUCTION
CONTENTS OF THIS GUIDE
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1 – Introduction
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2 – Curriculum Guidelines
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3 – Background material about the novel,
including a glossary and cast and crew list
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4 – Suggested approaches to teaching the miniseries
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5 – Student Activities. Looking at: Themes, Characters,
Adaptation, Literature and History. Episode synopses
are also included in this part of the guide
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6 – The filmmakers’ views about the challenges in
adapting and creating this series for television
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7 – Key discussion points and writing activities
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8 – References and Resources
SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015
The Secret River is a miniseries based on Kate Grenville’s
meticulously researched, Booker-nominated bestselling
novel of the same title. The Secret River tells the deeply
personal story of William and Sal Thornhill, early convict
colonists in New South Wales. The Secret River dramatises
the British colonisation of Australia in microcosm, with the
dispossession of Indigenous Australians made comprehensible and ultimately heart-breaking as William Thornhill’s
claim over a piece of land he titles ‘Thornhill’s Point’ on the
beautiful and remote Hawkesbury River brings his family
and neighbours into a fight for survival with the traditional
custodians of the land they have settled on.
Both the novel and this miniseries contain some quite
graphic scenes of violence, including a depiction of a flogging and scenes of the violence inflicted on people during
the conflict between the settlers and the Aboriginals.
Teachers are advised to preview the material (particularly
Episode 2) before showing it to middle school students,
even though it might seem to fit well into middle school
Australian History. The mini-series is challenging viewing
in that it is an authentic presentation of sometimes difficult issues, and part 2 in particular has some scenes of
violence (including sexual violence). The characters also
use language that would have been common amongst the
lower classes in Britain at the time.
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»»2. CURRICULUM GUIDELINES
The novel from which this series is adapted has been set
as a text for study in many schools throughout Australia,
mostly at senior levels, as well as in tertiary institutions. It
continues to be a popular novel for reading and discussion
in book groups. The Secret River has been continuously in
print since it was first released in 2005. It is available in numerous formats, including as an audio book and an eBook.
For senior secondary and tertiary students of Australian
History and Literature, the series has a lot to offer, providing
a picture of what society may have been like in the early
days of white settlement, and some of the bloody conflicts
which arose between the settlers and the Aboriginal
population on the Australian mainland. Experts estimate the
number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders at 700,000
at the time of first British settlement in 1788. It fell to its low
of around 93,000 people in 1900, a decrease of almost 87%.
Source: http://creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/people/
aboriginal-population-in-australia#ixzz3ZF1ONBlm. The
combination of introduced diseases, loss of land and
direct violence is believed to have reduced the Aboriginal
population in this dramatic way. Many massacres are well
documented.
The novel generated a lot of critical debate when it was first
published about the rights and responsibilities of novelists working in the genre of historical fiction. In deciding to
imaginatively re-create what life may have been like for the
early settlers based on a range of records, some historians
and critics questioned Grenville’s approach. Some of the
questions asked were, ‘How can we ever know how people
thought and behaved in the past, when the evidence is
drawn mostly from official records and a few letters and
personal accounts? Can we ever hope to understand the
contextual complexities of another time, place and people?’
However, it is worth considering that when we read novels
set in different cultures and at different times, we can often
empathise with the characters, despite never having experienced their lives and the choices open to them. Were
these early white settlers so different to us in their expectations and attitudes and behaviours that it is impossible for
us to imagine how they thought and behaved?
The details of the extent and nature of the racial conflicts
between early white settlers and Aboriginal Australians
are still strongly contested by historians. Others maintain
that we in the 2000s can not accurately re-imagine the
attitudes, behaviours and lives of people who first came to
Australia, often as convicts, dirt poor, uneducated, untravelled and unaware of anything much outside the lives they
led in Britain. They were the lowest members of a class
bound society, reviled by all and with little opportunity to
change their status.
Grenville has always said that The Secret River is a work of
fiction inspired by real events and people. It is dedicated to
‘the Aboriginal people of Australia, past, present and future’.
Grenville said she wanted to base the novel at every point
on whatever historical veracity I could find. She explains on
her website that she did an enormous amount of research.
This book isn’t history, but it’s solidly based on history. Most
of the events in this book ‘really happened’ and much of the
dialogue is what people really said or wrote.
See http://kategrenville.com/The_Secret_River for further
information from Grenville about her sense of the importance of historical fiction.
*As Grenville does in her novel with direct speech, I have
italicised her words in this guide when she is speaking
about how she worked.
For students watching this miniseries as part of a study
of early colonial life in Australia, they need to be able to
imaginatively enter into ‘another country’ where people did
things differently, a place that was not filled with buildings
and services, roads and hospitals. They need to consider
the isolation, the lack of any modern technologies such as
electricity, telephones, radios, vehicles only powered by
manpower, animals like snakes and kangaroos, totally new
and alien to these people who were mostly from England,
Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
There will be, for some students of literature and media, an
interest in evaluating the success of the adaptation of the
novel to the small screen. What is gained, what is lost and
to what degree will a miniseries such as this increase the
public interest in Australian history? How might it show us
a landscape and lives lived in the past? Can it recreate an
authentic looking and sounding place in the early 1800s
where settlers had to establish themselves?
SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015
In 2005 Kate Grenville said, I’m not a person who likes
conflict or public debate, but I feel very passionately that this
book is probably as close as we are going to get to what it
was actually like. This is a story that absolutely needs to be
told. We are ready for it, perhaps for the first time*.
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»»3. BACKGROUND
About Kate Grenville’s 2005
novel, The Secret River
The novel from which this miniseries has been adapted
was published to widespread acclaim. It was shortlisted
for the Man Booker Prize and The Miles Franklin Award in
2006 and, amongst other awards, won the Commonwealth
Writer’s Prize, the NSW Premier’s Literary Award and The
Literary Fiction Book of the Year in 2006.
The Secret River has been widely set as a text for study in
many schools since 2005. The Lieutenant, Kate Grenville’s
novel published in 2008, the second of her books exploring the contact between white settlers and Indigenous
Australians, is currently set for study in the 2015 VCE
English Context study ‘Encountering Conflict’. The third of
these ‘colonial’ novels, Sarah Thornhill, was published in
2011 and is about the youngest daughter of Will and Sal
Thornhill of The Secret River.
In several Australian states, The Secret River is a recommended text in Senior English studies. Part of the novel’s
continuing popularity may be because it is a really powerful love story as well as an historical novel whose concerns
about land ownership and the ongoing results of colonisation remain relevant today. Grenville’s evocations of the
THE FILMMAKERS
The miniseries is based on the award winning
2005 novel by Kate Grenville
Daina Reid
Producer
Stephen Luby
Executive Producers
Sue Masters, Carole Sklan,
Greer Simpkin & Mark Ruse
Screenplay
Jan Sardi & Mac Gudgeon
Co Producers
Daina Reid & Lesley Parker
Director of Photography
Bruce Young
Production Design
Herbert Pinter
Costume Design
Edie Kurzer
Hair and Makeup
Ian Loughnan
Editor
Denise Haratzis
Composer
Burkhard Dallwitz
Casting Director
Marianne Jade
Grenville followed up The Secret River with a non-fiction
book titled Searching for the Secret River in which she
describes both the research she undertook into the history
behind the book and her writing process. She chronicles how she changed from her original plan of writing a
non-fiction book about her great-great-great-grandfather,
Solomon Wiseman, to writing a fictional work. This is a
fascinating companion piece to the novel, allowing us to
see where Grenville has taken historical information from,
and how she has used it to create a dramatic story.
The Secret River has also been adapted for the stage
by Andrew Bovell and performed by the Sydney Theatre
Company in 2013. Interestingly, Trevor Jamieson who
plays Greybeard and Rory Potter who plays young Willie
Thornhill in this miniseries played the roles of Greybeard
and Dickie in the 2013 stage production.
You can read an excellent review of this production
at: http://blogs.crikey.com.au/curtaincall/2013/01/17/
review-the-secret-river-sydney-festival-sydney-theatre/
The miniseries has been adapted for television by Jan
Sardi and Mac Gudgeon. With a novel of the length and
complexity of The Secret River it is not possible to completely cover everything that happens in the novel in a two
part miniseries; for instance, the first section of the novel
re-creates Sal and Will’s life in London before they came
to Australia. However, the television drama begins when
the young Thornhill family has arrived at Sydney Cove, Will
as a transported convict and Sal as a free settler with their
two sons, the youngest born on the 12 month voyage out.
SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015
Director
landscape are wonderfully rich and vivid.
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names that suggest the rich Indigenous heritage of the
region – Dharug to the north and east, Yengo to the northwest, Cattai to the west, and Marramarra to the south.
It now takes approximately one hour to drive up the Pacific
Highway from Sydney to the Hawkesbury River region, but
in the early 1800s it would have been a much longer and
more difficult journey, part of which involved navigating up
or down the coast of NSW between the Hawkesbury River
settlements and the main settlement of Sydney Cove.
The land adjacent to the Hawkesbury River was occupied
for many thousands of years by the Darkinjung, Dharug,
Eora, and Kuringgai Aboriginal peoples. They used the
river as an important source of food and a place for trade.
The Aboriginal name for the river was published as
Deerubbun in 1870. The two main Aboriginal tribes
inhabiting the area were the Wannungine of the coastal
area on the lower reaches (below Mangrove Creek) and
the Darkinung people, whose lands were extensive on the
lower Hawkesbury to Mangrove Creek, upper Hawkesbury,
inland Hunter and lower Blue Mountains.
The Dharug tribe are the traditional custodians of the land
on the south bank of the Hawkesbury River. The river,
known to the Dharug as Deerubbun, and its nearby lagoons were a focal point for bands, clans or family groups
to collect food such as fish, eels, shellfish and water birds.
Yams and other plants growing on the fertile riverbanks
Place and time – a brief
history of the Hawkesbury
region of NSW
The secret river of the title is the Hawkesbury River, located to the west and north of Sydney, New South Wales,
Australia. It was first explored by white settlers in 1789 and
named by Governor Arthur Phillip just a year after the First
Fleet arrived in Botany Bay with its cargo of convicts.
Will Thornhill
Oliver Jackson-Cohen
Sal Thornhill
Sarah Snook
Willie (13 years)
Rory Potter
Dickie (7 years)
Finn Scicluna-O’Prey
Thomas Blackwood
Lachy Hulme
Smasher Sullivan
Tim Minchin
Sagitty
Samuel Johnson
Greybeard
Trevor Jamieson
Long Bob
Angus Pilakui
Mrs Herring
Genevieve Lemon
Dan
James O’Connell
Ned
Dom Phelan
Alexander King
Huw Higginson
Lord Loveday
Rhys Muldoon
Dickie (24 years)
Thomas Blackburne
SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015
The names and details on maps are increasingly contended by some people. Whose map and place names are
being used and for what purpose? To what extent do maps
imply ownership? European style maps of the Hawkesbury
convey some sense of the geography of the region, of the
surrounding terrain and the distance of the settlements
from Sydney. If you enter ‘maps of the Hawkesbury River’
into a search engine you will be presented with a number
of different styles of maps, each with a specific purpose
such as tourism, boating, fishing, terrain, walking tracks,
main roads, oyster farms, points of natural beauty etc.
For Aboriginal maps of the Hawkesbury area, see: http://
historyofaboriginalsydney.edu.au/west/1800s. Many of
the place names in the region are of British origin such as
‘Wiseman’s Ferry’, the name of Grenville’s family member
Solomon Wiseman who settled in the region in the 1800s.
However, the national parks encircling this town have
KEY CAST
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Glossary
of terms
were gathered depending on the season. The surrounding bushlands were places where the Dharug hunted and
trapped animals. The area has a rich culture and heritage
associated with it.
In 1789 two expeditions explored the Hawkesbury to the
northwest of Sydney and the Nepean River to the southwest. The Hawkesbury River was named by Governor
Phillip in June 1789, after Charles Jenkinson, 1st Earl of
Liverpool, who at that time was titled Baron Hawkesbury.
The Hawkesbury River was one of the major transportation routes for transporting food grown in the local area to
Sydney during the 1800s. Boats would wait in the protection of Broken Bay and Pittwater, until favourable weather
allowed them to make the ocean journey to Sydney Heads.
The Hawkesbury was crucial to the survival of the British
colony in New South Wales. In the early 1800s, with the
settlement at Sydney Cove struggling to feed an evergrowing number of convicts, soldiers and freehold landowners, the Hawkesbury became the colony’s breadbasket
and there was work for boatmen like Thomas Blackwood
and Will Thornhill transporting produce and building materials to and from Sydney on barges.
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-- Emancipist – a
transported convict
who has served his
time or been given a
pardon and can settle
in the country as a free
person. Will, Smasher
and Blackwood are all
emancipists
-- The Packet Trade –
transporting goods
-- Yams – a type of tuberous sweet potato
-- A lag – convict or
ex-convict
-- Damper – traditional
soda bread often
cooked in hot coals
-- Gammon – can be
used to mean ‘nonsense’ or ‘bullshit’
-- Salt pork – fresh pig
meat was also referred
to as gammon. It
needed to be preserved.
Only meat freshly killed
and eaten, such as kangaroo or goanna, was
not salted or preserved
in some way
SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015
But the clearing of land for agriculture came at a cost - and
that cost was largely borne by the Dharug people, many
of whom died at the hands of white settlers. Most of those
who survived the British invasion were forcibly displaced.
Free settlers and emancipated convicts took up the land
and cleared and fenced it for agriculture.
-- Wherry – type of boat
used to carry passengers and goods on
rivers, originally on the
Thames in London
-- Lighterman or waterman – person who
owns or works on a riverboat used to transport
passengers and goods
-- Bollard – short thick
post for tying up a boat
-- Colonial – a term used
to describe the experiences of the earliest
settlers to Australia
who came here when
Australia was a British
colony
-- Ticket of leave – release from convict status offered to convicts
who showed good work
habits and behaviour in
the colony; equivalent
to a pardon
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»»4. SUGGESTED APPROACHES
TO TEACHING THE SECRET
RIVER MINISERIES
There are several different areas for discussion teachers
could use as ways of exploring this miniseries with students, using the sets of questions in this guide. Not all sets
of questions will be suitable for all students. For some,
Sets A and B on Themes and Characters may be
enough, while other students may like to explore the questions about the adaptation process and making literature
from history. One hundred and seventy+ minutes is rather
a daunting amount of viewing time so it may work best
to screen the program in two time blocks of 85 minutes,
discussing the material presented in Part 1 before moving
on to the powerful intensity of Part 2.
3 Conflict with the original Aboriginal inhabitants
4 A sense of belonging, dispossession and land rights
B Exploring characters
C The adaptation process
D Making literature from history
After watching Episode 1 and reading through the synopsis
provided in this guide, students could begin to respond
to the questions about two of the themes explored in the
series;
1 Colonial Settlement of Australia and
2 Class and Race
A Exploring themes
Themes explored in this two - part miniseries include:
1 Colonial settlement of Australia
2 Class and race
It is probably best to leave discussion of the questions
about C. The adaptation process and D. Making literature from history until after students have watched the
second episode. They will make more sense to students
after they have watched both parts of the miniseries.
SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015
They could also begin to fill out their impressions of the
various characters introduced in this first episode using
Table 2.
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the ‘blacks’. She has agreed to give Will five years to make
their pile, but immediately begins counting down the days
in notches on a tree stump.
While the family sets about making their new life in true
pioneering fashion, clearing, planting and building a small
hut, it soon becomes apparent that owning this land, which
Will has now named ‘Thornhill’s Point’, is not as easy as he
first thought. His attempts to cajole the local Aboriginals
into moving on are awkward. There is a simmering hostility between Will and Gumang (Greybeard), the elder of the
clan. It’s clear they do not understand each other.
Synopsis – Episode 1
In 1803 Will Thornhill - Thames waterman turned convict begins his life sentence in the penal colony of New South
Wales. Assigned to his wife Sal, he obtains a job working
as an oarsman on Sydney Harbour. Sal establishes a rum
stall, eking out a living selling what is the only true currency
of the colony.
About six years later Will is pardoned. As ‘emancipists’, he
and Sal can now ply their trade freely and work towards
the return to London, which Sal in particular hankers for.
Opportunity comes knocking in the form of Thomas
Blackwood, an ex-convict himself. Recognising Thornhill’s
skills as a boatman, he tempts him with the idea of using
those skills to ‘make his pile’ running a transport boat
on the Hawkesbury River up north of the settlement of
Sydney. The idea captivates Thornhill.
Isolated in her new home, Sal is only too aware of the dangers that confront them, especially amidst talk and newspaper reports of ‘outrages and depredations’ on settlers by
When Sal develops a life-threatening fever, the fragility of this small family in a vast wilderness is all the more
apparent and Will prays desperately for her recovery. But
as soon as she does recover, he redoubles his efforts to
stay on ‘his’ land, make it prosperous, and to convince
Sal that this, and not London, is their true home. Episode
1 concludes with Will leaving his family on a trading trip
to Sydney, charging 12 year old Willie with protecting his
mother and two younger siblings. Just beyond their camp
is a vast and mysterious landscape, and the unknown
intentions of both their black and white neighbours.
SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015
Will accompanies Blackwood on his regular run up the
Hawkesbury, where the wild beauty of the landscape enchants him. It’s not just the freedom he feels but the sense
that this is a place where a man like him, so used to life on
the bottom rung of the social ladder, could be master of his
own fate. When he sees an untouched point of land jutting
out into the river ‘like a man’s thumb’, seemingly there
for the taking, he knows what he wants for his future. He
fears a return to London will only subject him once again
to the ‘convict stain’ of his impoverished past. Convincing
Sal that the wilderness of New South Wales holds more
promise than London is not easy but Will persuades her to
put her dream on hold and the family sails north to ‘take up
land’ on the Hawkesbury River.
He can’t quite understand Blackwood’s ‘give and take’ philosophy of living side by side with the Aboriginals But, he
is just as uncomfortable with the racist bitterness of other
neighbours along the river, like the malevolent Smasher
Sullivan. He nevertheless wishes they would go away, but
the Aboriginals hover at the edge of the Thornhill’s camp,
and of Will’s unsettled consciousness.
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»»5. STUDENT ACTIVITIES
A. Exploring Themes
Themes introduced in Episode 1
Theme 1 – Colonial Settlement
What did the first white settlers bring with them to
Australia? Beside each of the headings in Table 1 (on
page 10), write down what you think these early arrivals
brought with them, many of which are shown in The Secret
River.
Theme 2 – Class and Race
London’s foreign as a fish Sal...I won’t be dragging my
stinking past round like some dead dog. No, I won’t – Will
Thornhill
leave lasting bitterness and even rage?
• How does the desire for land ownership, fenced and
titled, continue to be apparent in Australia today?
• Does this story suggest why people develop and hold
views about racial superiority and inferiority?
B. Exploring Characters
Some characters are loosely based on historical figures
and some of their dialogue is taken from their own mouths
– Kate Grenville
The Secret River is a character driven narrative. It is about
a man and a woman and their love for each other and their
SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015
• What was the background of many of the earliest settlers
who came to NSW on the first and subsequent fleets?
• What does the setting up of a penal colony in far
away New South Wales suggest about the British
Government’s belief in their own right to populate distant lands with their criminals?
• In what ways were Indigenous peoples of Australia
and in many other parts of the world regarded as an
impediment to the extension of empires?
• How educated would many of these early arrivals have
been – convicts, their jailers and the military? Would
many of them have been able to read and write?
• What are some of the words and terms Will and other
white settlers use to talk about the Aboriginal people?
How do these words suggest they are regarded as less
than human?
• Can we assume anything from what we see in this
episode about how the Aboriginal people regarded the
white settlers?
• Which of the people in the story seem to be prepared
to take a less hostile and more practical approach to
living with others?
• What advice does Blackwood give to Will Thornhill
about ‘taking up’ or ‘taking’ land on which the
Aboriginal people live?
• How does Will’s desire to be free of ‘the convict stain’
influence his longing to make a new life in a new land?
How does his convict past continue to haunt him and
affect his treatment of the convict servants assigned to
him?
• In what ways does the desire to ‘be someone’ affect
how Sal adapts to life in NSW?
• How are the indignities heaped on people on the ‘lower
rungs of the ladder’ in class based societies shown to
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TABLE 1
THE BRITISH COLONISTS AND CONVICTS WHO ARRIVED IN AUSTRALIA BETWEEN 1789 AND THE EARLY 1800S
1 What were their
backgrounds? Where
were they from? What
skills did they bring?
2 What were their
probable beliefs about
themselves and their
place in the world
3Diseases
4Weapons
5 Working the land
6Animals
7Language
8 Likely knowledge
of other cultures
9 Work habits
SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015
10Religious beliefs
and practices
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desire for their children to have a better life. It is also
about others whose character and decisions are different
to those of the central protagonists. It is about people
trying to improve their lot in life and about how their
ambitions conflict with another group of people – the
Aboriginals who have been living on the land for thousands of years before the arrival of the white man.
While Will Thornhill is not a first person narrator in the
usual sense of that term, the story is, in most respects,
Thornhill’s. It is basically his and to some extent Sal’s
understanding of the world that we are given. One way
in which characters reveal themselves is through speech
– what they say and how they speak. For instance,
when he is advising Will how best to secure a pardon,
Thomas Blackwood says – for a quart he’ll send a letter
up the line vouching your good character and citing your
service to church and community. Gammon what would
discharge the devil himself. The voice and attitudes of
many of the characters are revealed through the way
they speak and can sometimes take a bit of working out.
In the novel, people’s speech is printed in italics. Other
ways we understand and assess people is through their
actions and how they relate to other people.
Make brief notes about your impressions of each member of the Thornhill family and other main characters
as they are depicted in this miniseries. After watching
Episode 2 you may need to return to this table and add
to it in the light of what we see in Episode 2.
If you have also read Kate Grenville’s novel, indicate
in column 3 how well you think the actors playing
these roles in the television series represented the
people we meet in the novel. In what ways does a
concern for veracity between text and miniseries
matter to many viewers? How can one form enrich
the other? See Table 2 on page 12.
Because the Aboriginal characters in this series do not
speak in a language that we can understand, it is more
difficult to attribute individual characteristics to them as
individuals.
Long Bob, alone at the end of the series says, ‘my place’
to Will in a poignant echo of how the other Aboriginals
mimicked Will’s assertions of land ownership earlier.
SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015
Several of the Aboriginal characters are central to the
story in different ways – Thomas Blackwood’s partner is
an Indigenous woman, young Dickie Thornhill develops a
friendship with Bunda, an Aboriginal boy and the group
he is part of, Mrs Herring gets advice from some of the
Aboriginal women when treating Sal’s illness and Will’s
encounters with Gumang/Greybeard leave an audience
in no doubt about his place in the Hawkesbury world.
Generally these characters are presented as tolerant, dignified and able to laugh at situations that seem
absurd.
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TABLE 2 – MAIN CHARACTERS
CHARACTER
IMPRESSIONS
SIMILARITY TO DESCRIPTION IN NOVEL
Will Thornhill
Sal Thornhill
Willie Thornhill
Dickie
Thornhill
Thomas
Blackwood
Smasher
Sullivan
Mrs Herring
Sagitty
SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015
Greybeard –
the leader of
the Aboriginal
group
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corroboree. Yet in the morning, all is deathly quiet as many
of the Aboriginals disperse. An uneasy peace settles over
Thornhill’s Point.
Two longboats full of redcoats (soldiers) ominously pass
through Thornhill’s Point on their way to a ‘disturbance’
upriver. Following the Governor’s proclamation that farmers
and settlers are entitled to defend their families, a warrant
is issued against the ‘native raiders’. Blackwood passes
on to Will what he has heard – that the Aboriginals, fed up
with the insensitivity of the settlers, are now determined to
‘drive the snake out of the hole’.
Synopsis – Episode 2
While Will is away in Sydney, Sal and the children survive
a scare with a snake, and encounter an Aboriginal family who set up camp on the other side of the point. This
concerns Will on his return, but Sal assures him everything
is OK,‘They’re just like us’.
Soon Will’s six-year-old son Dickie befriends a local
Aboriginal boy.
When Will has two convicts assigned to him as labourers,
any nagging doubts he may have had about his new life
soon give way to feelings of superiority and belonging. For
the first time in his life, there is someone under him. Sal
doesn’t mind being called ‘Mrs Thornhill’ either. For her it’s
a novelty, but for Will being called ‘Mr Thornhill’ represents
much more – final proof that he is now a gentleman, and
has risen above the ‘convict stain’.
Now more Aboriginals begin to arrive and set up camp
along the riverbank nearby. They seem to ignore the
Thornhill family, but Will cannot ignore them. He marches
into their camp and confronts the tribal leader Greybeard
with his claim to own all the land on ‘Thornhill’s Point’. The
Aboriginals do not understand what Will is saying.
Suddenly, Thornhill himself is under attack. A group of
warriors raid his cornfield. His neighbours, the Webbs, are
burned out. Smasher Sullivan and other hardliners urge
swift retaliation. At a nearby Aboriginal camp, Will makes
the gruesome discovery of a whole Aboriginal family
poisoned by rat powder. But his compassion for the native
victims is soon overwhelmed by rage when a raiding party
led by Greybeard sets his own cornfield alight.
Sal’s only concern now is for the safety of her young children. She wants to get out while they still can; she is going
to pack so they can leave. But Will refuses. He will not be
defeated by this intimidation.
Their impasse is interrupted by the arrival of Smasher,
pleading for Thornhill’s help. Another neighbour, Sagitty,
has been speared and they are in need of Thornhill’s boat
to row him upriver to the physician. On the way, Sagitty
dies, and Smasher urges the group of terrified, angry locals, to exact revenge. But they can only do so if Thornhill
is prepared to transport them in his boat. ‘Get rid of the
blacks, and she’ll stay’, urges one of his convict servants…
And thus Will Thornhill finds himself drawn along by a
tide of brutal events. Under pressure from his friends
and neighbours, he participates in the massacre of his
Aboriginal neighbours. Afterwards, he cannot admit to Sal
what he has done, and he never speaks of this atrocity
again.
Years later, even though he has achieved all he wanted,
with a grand homestead on Thornhill’s Point and untold
wealth as a colonial gentleman, William Thornhill lives life
in the dark shadow of unspoken guilt.
Will sails up a remote branch of the river to seek the advice
of the reclusive Thomas Blackwood. ‘Give a little if you
take a little,’ says Blackwood.
That night, the bush comes alive with the sound of chanting. It builds to a crescendo as Will and his family cower
in their hut. Will creeps over to the camp to witness what
he finds both the terrifying and enthralling spectacle of a
SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015
Will returns home to see scores more Aboriginals arriving
on ‘his’ point of land, by canoe, and on foot. Something is
going on. Will is overcome with fear of losing his hard-won
property.
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In particular he experiences a heart-rending distance from
his youngest son, Dickie, who as a young man now refuses
to come to the family home, but instead lives with the infirm Blackwood and a community of Aboriginals in a camp
upriver, a life symbolic of what his father has rejected, but
also of the future this new country might one day attain.
Theme 3 – Conflict with the original
inhabitants
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subduing and getting rid of the Aboriginals able to offer
them an advantage?
What were some of the more dangerous substances
and weapons introduced to the Aboriginal people by
the white settlers and used against them by individuals
like Smasher Sullivan?
How did introduced diseases affect the local
inhabitants?
In what ways were natural resources freely available to
each of the two groups?
How were the populations of native animals affected
by the arrival of different animals that also arrived on
boats?
In what way did the language barrier compound
the problems between the British settlers and the
Indigenous Australians?
How did the children manage to work around this
stumbling block to understanding and co-operation?
Given the fairly obvious presence of people living in
Australia when the British arrived, how could the myth
of ‘Terra Nullius’ have been maintained and enforced
for so long – 200 years?
Grenville and the filmmakers chose not to put into
words or translate or subtitle what the Aboriginal people say during their contact and conflict with the white
settlers. Why do you think this decision was made and
was it a wise one?
What are the assumptions about rights made explicit in
the proclamation document printed here that the settlers see as giving them the right to take matters into
their own hands?
While it is hereby acknowledged that the
black population of the colony appears to
have manifested a spirit of animosity and
hostility towards the British inhabitants, in
the Hawkesbury region in particular, the
killing of natives is strictly forbidden and
will be punished with the utmost severity of
the law.
However, on occasion of any native coming
armed, or in a hostile manner to property
belonging to a British subject, said subject
is not required to suffer his property to be
invaded or his existence endangered and may
pursue and inflict such punishment as the
circumstances merit.
Proclamation of the NSW corps.
SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015
• Considering the assumptions and backgrounds of the
British colonists, in what ways was it likely that they
would come into conflict with the original inhabitants,
the Aboriginal groups living in the area?
• How did the fundamental differences in their attitudes
towards land use and ownership lead to violent conflicts between settlers and Aboriginals? Outline how
each group regarded land use and ownership.
• What was likely to be the outcome of any clashes
that developed between the two groups? In what
ways were the white people’s available resources for
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Theme 4 – A sense of belonging –
dispossession and land rights
It’s theirs Will. Always has been. That’s why they come and
go. They been doin’ it forever – Sal Thornhill
• In what ways is ‘a sense of belonging’ expressed by
Will and Sal Thornhill?
• What are the main differences in each one’s sense of
what ‘home’ means?
• How is Will Thornhill in particular concerned to create a sense of belonging and even ownership in the
Hawkesbury region? What are some of the factors in
his past that make this desire for a place to call ‘home’
so poignant?
• Do any of the Thornhills seem to have much empathetic awareness of the Aboriginal people’s sense of
place and belonging, something often referred to today
as ‘country’?
• Which other characters in the story show some sense
of the need to acknowledge the rights of the original
inhabitants?
• How does being dispossessed of your place and land
disrupt and even destroy lives?
• Does Will and Sal’s experience as ‘migrants’ in a
new land have any parallels in our contemporary
experience?
• What are some of the factors in our 20th and 21st century lives that allow us to be more mobile and inclined
to move on from our place of birth or family home?
• How long did it take for white Australians to accept that
the Indigenous Australians had rights over land that
had been progressively taken from them by white settlers as their own?
• Is there evidence that this business of land use and
ownership is not fully resolved in Australia today?
SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015
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C. Understanding the
adaptation process
D. Making literature from history
Putting flesh on the bones of history – Kate Grenville
• How do we know about the past?
• What do we know about the past?
• What sort of records would have been available to Kate
Grenville about this early period of the 19th century in
Australia?
• How can an author imagine and represent the past,
especially when official written records are sometimes
incomplete and unverified?
Kate Grenville spent 5 years working on this novel and
undertook an enormous amount of research to create as
clear and accurate a picture as possible of the world of
London and the colony of NSW in the late 18th and early
part of the 19th century.
On her website at: http://kategrenville.com/The_Secret_
River she writes about the challenges of uncovering and
SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015
• What skills are needed to adapt a novel or other piece
of written work to film or television?
• Why do you think some authors are reluctant to have
their stories re-created in a different medium such as
film?
• Outline the difference between ‘a faithful’ adaptation of
a text and a comprehensive translation to the screen?
• What kind of detail is important to ensure that the
story looks authentic in the sense of what it was probably like in this part of the world in the early 1800s?
(Consider light and hygiene for a start)
• Who are the members of a film crew essentially responsible for getting the look of the period and place right?
• What can a written text offer that is difficult to replicate
in a filmed story?
• What can a filmed version offer an audience that may
be more difficult to convey in words alone?
• How can filmmakers directing characters offer viewers
complex insights into their characters’ thought processes? How can characters in a ‘naturalistic’ drama
reveal their thoughts to an audience?
• How does a novelist provide insights into characters?
• How does a playwright such as Shakespeare or Arthur
Miller reveal the internal workings of a person’s thought
processes?
• If it is the case that we know about characters through:
a) What they do (actions and behaviours)
b) What they say
c) How others respond to them and regard them and
d) How they look and present themselves in the world
they inhabit...
What assessments would you make of two of the main
characters in this miniseries? E.g. Will and Blackwood,
Sal and Smasher Sullivan, Dickie and Mrs Herring?
• And what about the Aboriginal people? How are they
represented and what do we learn of their world and
how they have responded to the strangers? Have we
any business to be imagining how they felt? In choosing generally not to ‘voice’ the Aboriginal characters,
Grenville keeps the perspective focussed on the colonists’ viewpoints. And yet, we do get something of the
Aboriginal viewpoint in both the novel and the miniseries. Where might such insights come from in how we
understand how they responded to the white strangers
moving on to their land?
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re-creating the past and finding the truths about the nature
of the contact between the groups. She says:
It was all very well to know about my ancestor’s business dealings (great-great-great- grandfather Solomon
Wiseman) but what had gone on exactly upon that hundred
acres on the Hawkesbury? In those days (about 1810) the
river was the very limit of settlement – the frontier. Perhaps
he’d been granted the land, or perhaps he’d just selected it
and worried about the paperwork later. He’d sailed up the
river, he’d pushed the boat in among the mangroves, he’d
struggled through them to dry land – and then what?
How had the local Aboriginal people taken the entry of
this man and his family onto their traditional land? What
had it been like, that very first day – what had happened
when the Aboriginal people came out of the bush towards
the Europeans? What had they done, and what did my
ancestor do? Had it been friendly (as of course I hoped) or
distrustful, even violent?
My search was frustrating...there was no information that I
could find about my relatives relationships with the Dharug
people around him, not even a passing reference.
This could mean that nothing happened...or that he found
a way to co-exist with them.
Or it could mean that things happened – but things that it
was in no-one’s interest to record.
The Secret River is historical fiction; it is not non-fiction,
biography or documentary as it offers an account of people’s lives that is partly drawn from historical records but
also where briefly mentioned events are re-imagined and
characters and encounters created. Historical records are
often used by writers and filmmakers to ensure as far as
possible that the world being portrayed in the novel or on
screen is believable, that it looks and sounds authentic and
believable. Here are some examples:
SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015
• War stories are very often the subject of feature films.
Think about Peter Weir’s 1981 film Gallipoli, starring
a young Mel Gibson or Breaker Morant, directed by
Bruce Beresford in 1980 or The Water Diviner, Russell
Crowe’s 2015 contribution to this genre. It is said
that it is through Weir’s Gallipoli that many people
have framed their view of the World War 1 Gallipoli
campaign.
What are some of the common factors shared by these
films in the ways they present a dramatic story?
• Shakespeare often used records of family feuds, past
wars and battles and political stories to create his
plays many years after the historical events. And today,
these Shakespearian stories are being re-told in new
contexts and times, e.g. Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth,
Hamlet, King Lear. How do Shakespeare’s plays still
retain such contemporary relevance and interest?
• These films all tell stories from the past through characters and incidents based on historical events but
dramatised for the purposes of telling a good story.
Why is it that a drama based on an actual event can
often be more popular than a documentary film about
the same event? In a word, what is it about a story that
is so appealing? Do we identify with heroes and their
challenges, with people who overcome obstacles? Do
we long to know more about many figures from the
past who we suspect had similar dreams and aspirations to our own?
• Actor Natasha Wanganeen who plays a small role as
Smasher’s sex slave, ‘black velvet’, as he describes
her, has said that while she found her part confronting,
she did it ‘to honour my ancestors’.
In what ways do you think the actors playing the parts
of the British settlers might have a sense of honouring
their ancestors? To what extent were you able to empathise with Will and Sal Thornhill, or any of the other
settlers in the story? What is the difference between
empathising and understanding and endorsing?
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• Many of the scenes were shot around Lake Tyers
in Victoria for reasons the producer explains in the
next part of this guide. Several of the scenes of the
Thornhills establishing their claim to the land on
Thornhill’s Point are reminiscent of the paintings of
early Australian artists like Frederick McCubbin of the
Heidelberg school and of contemporary Australian artist William Robinson.
How do the filmmakers manage to make the landscapes beautiful, mysterious, menacing and even
secretive at the same time?
Characters and Conflict
They’re just passing through on their way somewhere – Sal
It’s no different to shooting a dog – Smasher
My Place – Gumang (Greybeard)
You won’t never be welcome, but they might just leave you
alone. Simple as that – Blackwood
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Events and responses cause changes in how we might see
the characters in this series. Returning to the characters in
relation to the impressions you recorded earlier in Table 2,
respond to the following questions:
• How is Will Thornhill persuaded to go up river to
Blackwood’s place by some of the other settlers? What
part does fear and desperation play in his becoming entangled in the massacre? How are his attitudes
changing and why?
• How is Sal affected by the growing unrest on the
Hawkesbury? What is the focus of her concern? Why
does she forcefully reject the stated threats and behaviour of Smasher and Sagitty in particular?
• How do the Thornhill sons, Willie and Dickie, react
to what is developing between their family and their
Aboriginal neighbours?
• In what ways is the real extent of Smasher’s depravity
and evil shown in the second episode? Which character represents the decent side of the settlers?
• How can life never be the same now for Will? How is
his isolation, despite his material success, shown in the
final scenes of the series?
• Is being sorry ever enough or is it important for people
who have wronged others to make reparations?
• Why do you think Grenville dedicated her novel to
the ‘Aboriginal people of Australia: past, present and
future’?
SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015
Now this is the point. Now all of this, that’s mine, right?
It’s mine now. You can have all the rest but this is my
place now...My place, you understand – Will to Gumang
(Greybeard)
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»»6. THE FILMMAKERS’ VIEWS
ABOUT THE CHALLENGES AND
HIGHLIGHTS OF MAKING THIS
SERIES
Stephen Luby, the film’s producer explains why he thought
it was important to make this series into a television
drama:
The moment I finished reading the novel, I felt an urgency
to find a way to get this story ‘out there’ to as many
Australians as possible. I wanted others to experience the
insight and empathy that it had evoked in me. An illumination not of historical facts and social issues, but into the
profound feelings and pressures faced by all the ‘players’,
both Indigenous and white, in the early days of European
settlement of this country, and which still echoes amongst
us all today.
So much of the debate about black/white relations in this
country has been about polarization: not just of colour and
race, but of past and present, guilt and national pride, the
‘black arm band view of history’ versus a jingoistic account
of the heroism of our pioneers, whether they be convicts,
explorers or pastoralists.
But ‘The Secret River’ short-circuited all that and gave an
account more profound than any I had yet encountered.
This was because it led to an understanding of our past,
not judgments about it. And this understanding promoted
a willingness to face difficult truths about Australia that
I - we – would otherwise shy away from. And it did so
because in the characters of Will Thornhill – impoverished
cockney, convict, emancipist, and eventually landed squire;
and free-settler Sal, his big-hearted pioneer wife, the ‘light’
and ‘dark’ of what we might call the ‘Australian spirit’ were
expressed in the particular experience of real people in the
context of a real relationship in a real time and place.
How were we to create the world of New South Wales
circa 1813? How were we to manage our time and budget
so as to achieve the production values required by the
story, in the locations required, and still finish on schedule?
But just as important as the question of scale, was the
question of how to achieve the emotional truth and ethical
ethos of the story. This could only be done at the personal
level in moments of intimacy between characters...Casting
was thus a major key to authenticity.
The Indigenous cast on this film
In paying tribute to the Indigenous cast in this production,
Stephen Luby, the producer has said:
During the whole process of casting, pre-production,
production, post-production and now in preparation for
making our story public, I have come very much to rely on
Trevor {Trevor Jamieson who plays the part of Greybeard}
for an authentic Indigenous perspective on what we are
SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015
Working with our Indigenous cast, and our Indigenous
consultant Richard Green has been a particular honour.
The story of the dispossession of their forebears is a painful one, and was sometimes physically and emotionally
difficult. But they too felt a responsibility to tell the story. As
Natasha Wanganeen, who played a particularly confronting
role, {Slasher’s ‘sex slave} said, ‘This is very difficult, but I
am doing it to honour my ancestors.’
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trying to achieve. The difficulty of the subject matter for
both black and white Australians is obvious and we have
always wanted to treat it with sensitivity from both points
of view. Trevor, along with indigenous consultant Richard
Green, has helped enormously on that level.
The spirit that all Indigenous participants to this story,
which is a story about their dispossession, and the generosity and the willingness to convey that story and the good
humour with which they did it as people gave me a great
sense of the sort of collaboration that is possible between
all of us in Australia.
»»7. KEY DISCUSSION POINTS
ABOUT THE SECRET RIVER
Select one or more of the following discussion points as a
prelude to preparing a response to this production in the
form of an essay, a report or a visual presentation such as
an artwork or a set of images presented in a way that illuminates or comments on the story. Question 2 may involve
you in some further research.
Co-screenwriter of this production, Mac Gudgeon,
called The Secret River a story of miscommunication,
a clash between two cultures. ‘The white blindfold
version of history is just stupid, because if all those
Aboriginals died, and it wasn’t a war, then it was genocide. We’ll never mature as a nation until we face it.’
Co-writer, Jan Sardi agreed: ‘A lot of people still don’t
realise what happened to Aboriginal people. They won’t
accept it. It was a war that was being fought.’ His hope
is that, like Peter Weir’s Gallipoli before it, The Secret
River puts history into the public arena and ‘changes
people’s consciousness’.1
Is it important to acknowledge the blood on white
hands in relation to Indigenous Australians, as their
treatment is shown in this series? In what ways is it
important to acknowledge wrongs as a means of understanding the pain of others, especially people who
have been dispossessed for generations? Who does
such acknowledgement benefit?
2 A recent Government proposal intends to persuade,
(largely through withdrawal of funding), Indigenous
Australians living on settlements on their traditional
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The Locations
SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015
One of our key challenges was locations. The story is set
on the Hawkesbury River, north of Sydney, but it became
apparent after some initial location surveys that we couldn’t
really shoot in any great detail on the Hawkesbury River
because anywhere that was pristine and without obvious
human habitation - which we needed to convey the wilderness of the region in 1810 - was also impossible from a
logistical perspective to locate cast and crew. Ultimately,
we came to Sydney to shoot some wide, panoramic shots
to create the very particular and distinct and beautiful feel
of the Hawkesbury, but we also had to find somewhere
quieter and more remote that matched the landscape and
vegetation on the Hawkesbury. There was a time when it
looked like we weren’t going to find it, but just by a stroke
of good fortune or serendipity we stumbled upon the pristine, beautiful riverscape of Lake Tyers in East Gippsland in
Victoria, a five-hour drive east of Melbourne.
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land to give up what has been described as a ‘lifestyle choice’ and move into towns and cities. Many
of the 274 remote settlements are said to be ‘economically unviable’, dysfunctional and unsustainable. How might such decisions affect the ongoing
processes of reconciling with the First Australians?
3 Are Will and Sal Thornhill presented as essentially
decent people who are unable to see an alternative
to pushing the Aboriginals back, resisting them and
eventually being involved in the massacre because
they are fearful for their own security? To what degree are the enormous differences in understanding
between white settlers and their Aboriginal neighbours shown to be a question of language barriers?
4 Write an extended review (800 words) of this miniseries outlining its strengths and weaknesses (if any).
You may choose to focus on just one or two elements
of the production, such as performances, production
design, musical score or cinematography. If you are
seeing this series in relation to the novel, you may like
to outline your views about how successful it is as an
adaptation.
»»8. REFERENCES AND
RESOURCES
SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015
Grenville’s website has a wealth of information about the
novel and her approach to writing historical fiction
http://kategrenville.com/The_Secret_River
A brief account of the early history of the region
http://westernsydneylibraries.nsw.gov.au/hawkesbury/
history.html
Who arrived on The First Fleet (and those that followed)
and why?
http://firstfleetfellowship.org.au/ships/the-voyage/
The early history of the Hawkesbury River
http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/hawkesbury_river
Aboriginal maps of the Hawkesbury area
http://historyofaboriginalsydney.edu.au/west/1800s
Timeline of white settlement
http://creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/history/
aboriginal-history-timeline-1770-1899#axzz3ZQgBWQ6i
Timeline of British colonisers’ activities in NSW in the early
decades of settlement
http://k6.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/go/
hsie/background-sheets/british-colonisers-1792-1809
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Articles about the novel and
the theatre adaptation
A 2005 article from the Age newspaper by Jane Sullivan
outlining the controversy the novel generated in relation
to the so-called ‘History Wars’.
http://theage.com.au/news/books/skeletons-out-ofthe-closet/2005/06/30/1119724752099.html
A review of the stage play of The Secret River
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/curtaincall/2013/01/17/
review-the-secret-river-sydney-festival-sydney-theatre/
A 2009 Age/SMH text talk article about The Secret River
by Avril Moore
http://smh.com.au/national/education/all-ourbelongings-20090914-fj18.html
A 2008 Text Talk article by Roger Stitson about The Secret
River
http://mackyr12english.wikispaces.com/file/view/
theage_secretriver3.pdf
An ABC regional program report about filming The Secret
River around Lake Tyers in Victoria
http://abc.net.au/local/photos/2014/07/31/4057704.
htm
Please note the ABC (and ATOM) are not responsible
for the content of external websites.
Books
The Secret River – an Insight text guide by Anica
Boulanger-Mashberg, Insight publications, 2012. Available
through the Insight website at http://insightpublications.
com.au.
Lighting Dark Places: essays on Kate Grenville, edited by
Sue Kossew, Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2010
The Secret River, an adaptation of Grenville’s novel for the
stage by Andrew Bovell, Currency Press, 2013
This text includes an excellent introduction by historian
Henry Reynolds.
(Endnotes)
1 http://theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/jan/17/
gallipoli-and-the-secret-river-tv-set-to-challengeaustralias-foundation-myths
SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015
Kim Scott, That Deadman Dance, Picador, 2013
This novel by Indigenous author Kim Scott tells the story
of white settlement on the south-west coast of Western
Australia between 1826 and 1844. Initially, there are largely
peaceful exchanges between Indigenous and settler cultures; later, the two groups come to the brink of war due to
the actions of the newcomers.
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All stills from the mini-series by Sarah Enticknap © Ruby Entertainment 2015
This study guide was produced by ATOM. (© ATOM 2015)
ISBN: 978-1-74295-586-5 editor@atom.org.au
For information on SCREEN EDUCATION magazine,
or to download other study guides for assessment,
visit <http://www.screeneducation.com.au>.
For hundreds of articles on Film as Text,
Screen Literacy, Multiliteracy and Media Studies,
visit <http://www.theeducationshop.com.au>.
SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2015
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Sign up now at <http://www.metromagazine.com.au/email_list/>.
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